The Intentions of Thunder

Smith (Unshuttered) delivers a formidable volume of selected and previously uncollected poems. Performing the work of “desperate remembering,” Smith revels in Black joy even as she records the violence committed against Black bodies in the name of white supremacy: “We are the disappeared, desolate, and misplaced,/ dark magicians stronger than any root or conjure.” The poet’s uncanny ear and powerfully empathic imagination bring to life Black figures, from those who go unnamed in 19th-century photographs to Little Richard and the victims of Hurricane Katrina (“every woman begins as weather”). A bereaved child asks the poet to “undead” her mother, “Replacing the voice./ Stitching on the lost flesh.” An undertaker repairs the mutilated corpses of young Black men for the sake of their grieving families: “I have smoothed the angry edges/ of bullet holes. I have touched him in places/ no mother knows, and I have birthed his new face.” A pressing question throbs throughout the collection: “can poems save us?” At one point, Smith describes poems as being “only ways to layer music over hurting. Ways to say the quiet things out loud.” Elsewhere, she admits, “I really thought the words would grow to gospel in my hands.” Readers will find themselves forever changed by Smith’s spirited voice. (Sept.)